On the air

U-T TV will offer a mix of news, entertainment and lifestyle programming, and its lineup includes:

•“Scott, B.R.+ Amber”

Airs on utsandiego.com this week from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. In two weeks the show moves to the 6 a.m.-11 a.m. slot Monday through Friday.

•“San Diego Centric”

The entertainment/lifestyle show hosted by Chris Cantore and Michelle Guerin will run from 11 a.m. to noon and 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday (Coming by end of the month)

U-T San Diego is launching an in-house television station that will extend the company’s reach well beyond the newspaper with original local news, talk and lifestyle programming on cable and the Web.

The move is a new strategy in an industry that traditionally separated print and broadcast tracks. That line has already been blurred with the newspaper offering breaking news coverage, video and audio through its website. The creation of U-T TV marks the most dramatic step so far in the company’s evolution, said John Lynch, U-T San Diego’s chief executive officer.

“We’re going to be, every moment of the day, talking about San Diego,” Lynch said. “We realize that we have a very valuable asset and that is unique, exclusive content that is hyperlocal and all about San Diego — from sports to business to the news.”

Hotel entrepreneur Doug Manchester bought the newspaper in November, returning it to local hands after more than two years of ownership by a private equity firm. Manchester was joined in the venture by Lynch, who co-founded Noble Broadcast Group and has a long history of owning radio stations.

Since then, the company has invested more than $3 million to construct a state-of-the-art studio with a control room and professional lighting. It has hired about a dozen of the roughly 50 people who will run the station.

Built in just three months, the studio occupies a large section of the newsroom on the third floor of U-T San Diego’s Mission Valley headquarters. The studio’s backdrop includes images of Balboa Park, the Del Mar races, downtown and the beach.

U-T TV kicked off its morning show last week, and its goal is to develop round-the-clock programming within a year. Currently, “Scott, B.R. + Amber” can be viewed on utsandiego.com/tv each weekday morning. Other planned programming: “San Diego Centric,” with U-T entertainment/lifestyle personalities Chris Cantore and Michelle Guerin, and “Top Stories” with U-T editorial writer Chris Reed, a news/talk show.

The programming soon will be available on dedicated cable channels. U-T San Diego is in talks with Cox Communications, Time Warner Cable and AT&T, Lynch said.

The new TV station will compete for audience not only with local television news operations — KUSI, San Diego 6 and KPBS, and affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX — but also with 24-hour news channels such as CNN, analysts said.

Tim Wulfemeyer, a professor in the School of Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University, said San Diego is a “relatively crowded market” competing for ad revenue in broadcast news. But Wulfemeyer believes there’s room for a quality news operation. Local TV stations have shrunk their news staffs, in some cases from as many as 100 to 30 people, he said.

“For this size city, there’s nowhere near enough investigative reporting, thorough reporting,” he said. “… I think there’s an opening for somebody to come in and get the franchise. Any organization that wants to step into that vacuum and make a go of it, great. I think there are people clamoring for that.”

U-T San Diego isn’t the first newspaper to launch a television station. In 1990, The Orange County Register launched Orange County Newschannel as a 24-hour operation, but it failed to make money and was sold six years later. And in 2000, the Tampa Tribune began working with a TV station owned by its parent company; the two operate out of the same building. Several other partnerships have been launched in various markets.

More media outlets are offering content on different digital platforms, including The Huffington Post, which will launch HuffPost Streaming Network — 12 hours of original programming for five days a week — this summer. The Wall Street Journal features reporters and newsmakers on its WSJ Live app, and TMZ, the entertainment news website, hosts TMZ.TV interviews with celebrities.

Lynch said the U-T television venture is different from past experiments because the timing is right. Better technology is available. The TV market has been disrupted with major staff cuts. And the U-T is demonstrating “an all-out commitment” toward offering content on multiple platforms, he said.

Reporters who are already posting news online to utsandiego.com and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are being trained to shoot video and will appear on U-T TV to discuss their news stories.

“U-T TV is simply one of the leading platforms of the U-T media offerings,” Lynch said.

Leading the TV effort is veteran news producer J.R. Mahon, director of news and programming for U-T TV. Mahon has more than 25 years of broadcast industry experience and was executive producer of Channel 10’s morning show in San Diego. Other local television stations “have the same lead stories across the board and the same stereotypical looking people, with the same graphics going to the same press conference,” he said.

He wants reporters and editors to have their own shows. “You have a newspaper that’s already doing great things online,” Mahon said. “This really isn’t a risk; it’s a fantastic opportunity. We’re not separating TV, newspapers, online; we’re integrating content, social media and news on different platforms — and talking to each other while we do it.”

U-T TV will make money through advertising, such as sponsorships and partnerships. Unlike other local stations, it will not be a network affiliate, so it won’t be obligated to carry four to six hours of syndicated programming each day, Lynch said. He believes businesses will welcome the chance to be associated with local content.

Michael Parks, former Los Angeles Times editor and former director of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, wondered whether there is enough of a local audience to justify the expense of a round-the-clock broadcast operation. He worried about the potential impact on “boring but important” journalism traditionally done by the newspaper.

That’s not a concern of Mahon’s, though. He said there’s no shortage of news, events and personalities in San Diego.